The goal of the event is to bring together a range of people, including students, professors and lecturers, researchers, adjunct instructors, non-academic university employees, and community activists to discuss the corporatisation and neoliberalisation of higher education in the Netherlands and what can be done to resist this trend. We believe that there is widespread concern about the impacts of this model on the quality of education, research, and working conditions at universities. In recent years we have witnessed growing resistance to this trend around the world, including here in the Netherlands.

For this event, we expect to have participants from a range of universities (including the University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, Wageningen University), employment positions (including professors, lecturers, doctoral candidates, students, and support staff), and national backgrounds.

Final Program

1. 13:00: The corporate university: a worldwide perspective

• What is the corporate model and how is it imposed in universities in the Netherlands and elsewhere?
Dimitris Pavlopoulos – VU University Amsterdam

• What have been the effects of this process in the US?
Michael Marchman – Wageningen University

2. 14:45 Labour, management and governance in the corporate university

• Top down vs collaborative governance. Sexism and silence in Academia.
Julie McBrien – University of Amsterdam

• The consequences of university corporatisation on working conditions, security, workload and quality of research and education.
Rivke Jaffe – University of Amsterdam

3. 16:30 What can we do? Organising for resistance in universities

• Where have there been successes in resisting the corporatization of higher education?
Boris Slijper – VU University Amsterdam

• What can we learn from struggles of the cleaners and other university workers?
Solomon Nyarko – VU University Amsterdam

• What means exist or need to be created for organising and resisting in the Dutch context?
Matthias van Rossum – VU University Amsterdam